


How to Fake Your Own Death in Fifty Easy Breakdowns or Your Money Back

by ryanthepowerbottomguy



Series: Ticket to Hell [3]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Fake AH Crew, GTA AU, M/M, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-28
Updated: 2015-09-28
Packaged: 2018-04-23 08:20:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4869881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryanthepowerbottomguy/pseuds/ryanthepowerbottomguy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Faking his own death? That was the easy part. What isn’t so easy is living with himself afterwards.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Fake Your Own Death in Fifty Easy Breakdowns or Your Money Back

Ray punched in the number he had memorized two months ago, his hands shaking against the metal of the public phone. It was cold in the booth, as cold as outside, but at least it was a respite from the spitting rain he’d been walking in before. He shivered and pulled his hoodie tighter around him as the phone rang and rang.

He glanced over his shoulder again, checking beyond the lighted safety of the phone booth, but there was no one there, no one there, just like there had been no one there the last hundred times he had checked. You’re being stupid, he told himself as the line picked up.

“Hello?” Michael said on the other end of the line. He sounded like he had just been woken up, which was fair because it was late, and Michael probably had work or something in the morning. Ray felt the anxiety start to leach out of him at the sound of Michael’s voice, and he couldn’t catch his breath enough to speak. “Hey, fuckface, who is this?”

“Michael,” Ray said. His voice was shakier than he wanted it to be. “It’s me, it’s Ray.”

“Ray,” Michael said, voice sharp now, and when Ray closed his eyes he could imagine Michael rolling out of bed, sitting up to cradle the phone close. “Hey, man. You doing okay?”

“I…” Ray didn’t know how to answer that. His parents buried a coffin with the wrong body in it today. “I need a place to stay for a while. I don’t have a place to stay.”

\--

It was easy to get down to the morgue. People in Liberty City didn’t ask as many questions as they should, and nobody paid any mind to a kid in a hoodie wandering around where he shouldn’t have been.

The place was empty when Ray pushed the doors open. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. On one hand, that meant he would have the upper hand when the mortician got back from her break. On the other hand…

On the other hand, it gave him too much time to think about what the fuck he was doing.

Eleven minutes later, a doctor in teal scrubs bustled back into the morgue, not seeming to notice Ray at first. She was an older woman, her black hair beginning to go gray, and she reminded him of his — no, he wasn’t going to think about her.

He noisily cleared his throat, and she startled a little — she tried not to, but he could see it in her shoulders — and turned to face him. There was no fear in her face, only mild annoyance, when she said, “I don’t know who you are, but you’re not supposed to be in here.”

Ray stood and approached her, hands held out to show he wasn’t armed. He didn’t want to hurt her. “Tomorrow,” he said, “a body is gonna come through here, burned beyond recognition. You’re going to write down on the death certificate that the body is of Ray Narvaez, Jr. Understand?”

“No,” the doctor said. “I don’t know who you are, but you better get out before I call hospital security. I don’t do that kind of thing here.”

Ray pulled off his backpack and set it down on top of one of the long metal tables. She watched carefully as he unzipped it and pulled out a stack of cash, nearly everything he had been able to save from his jobs for the past six months.

After this, he would be completely starting over.

“You sure about that?” he asked, watching her conviction waver in the face of the money. If there was anything that Ray had learned in the last year, it was that people’s morals were surprisingly weak in the face of cold, hard cash. He pulled out the other stack.

“Ray Narvaez, Jr.?” she asked, reaching out to take the money. “I’m guessing that’s you?”

“No, Ray Narvaez, Jr. is the guy you’re doing an autopsy on tomorrow,” Ray said with a grin. “Thanks, doc.”

\--

Michael found him an hour and a half later in a McDonald’s near the phone booth Ray had used. Ray was exhausted and wired and he couldn’t help but jump when Michael’s hand landed on his shoulder.

“Hey,” Michael said. “Sorry, the subway is shit, a train got delayed. I’m gonna get a burger — you want anything?”

Ray shook his head. He wasn’t hungry — hadn’t been hungry in days. Besides, that was money, and he had to be careful about money now.

Ray didn’t say anything during the long subway ride back to Michael’s apartment. He was still unsure. He and Michael had only known each other a few months, not really friends; buddies who kick each other’s asses at video games, maybe, but they didn’t have the kind of relationship to make something like this work. Ray had killed five people — six, now, he thought hysterically, if he included himself — but none of those were this terrifying.

Michael’s apartment was a shoebox on the fourth floor of a walkup, neat because otherwise there wouldn’t be room to breathe. All the furniture looked like it was about three days from falling apart, except for the Xbox sitting beneath the nice television. When Michael closed the door behind them, Ray took what felt like the first breath he had taken for a week.

“You going to tell me what’s going on?” Michael asked as he sat down on the small bed in the corner to pull off his shoes.

Ray sat on the edge of the short, lumpy couch — the only other place in the apartment to sit — and shook his head.

“Are you in some kind of trouble?” Michael asked.

“Tomorrow, _please_ ,” Ray said. He was so tired he was close to tears, and he just, just wanted to forget about what he had done for a few hours.

There was no going back now. There hadn’t been any going back for over a year now.

\--

Ray grew up in a shit part of Liberty City (which, to be fair, was a good deal of Liberty City). His parents were good people, but his mom had taught him how to shoot a gun in middle school. He was pretty sure that that wasn’t a normal mother-son bonding exercise, but they lived in a bad part of town and he got left home alone a lot.

His mom hadn’t expected how much Ray would _like_ shooting a gun. And Ray did enjoy it, enjoyed the jerk of the pistol and the deafening crack and the way over weeks and months, the targets came back with more and more lethal shots in them. It made him feel grown up, made him feel better than his classmates. He may have been tiny, skinny Ray Narvaez, Jr. with crappy eyesight and threadbare clothes, but he could shoot a gun and hit a target and he was pretty sure no one else in his eighth grade class could say that.

\--

“My family thinks I’m dead,” Ray said the next morning over cereal and coffee. Ray still couldn’t stand the taste of coffee, especially considering how strong Michael made it, but it cleared a little of the cloud hanging around in his head.

“Christ,” Michael said. “What the fuck, Ray?”

Ray shrugged stiffly. He hadn’t slept well on the lumpy couch, and his whole body was protesting this morning.

“You’re in some kind of trouble.” It wasn’t a question, not anymore.

Ray looked away, took a nervous drink of his coffee. And here was the problem. Michael didn’t know what Ray did, what kind of trouble that Ray was in. Michael was a normal person with a job and an apartment and probably a girlfriend or something. He was an _electrician_ , for fuck’s sake.

“Yeah,” Ray said. “I… I faked my death, Michael.”

His family had been getting too close, had started wondering where Ray kept getting money, what he was doing during the long hours he wasn’t spending at his shitty Gamestop job, and Ray had been so, so afraid that they would dig deep and would get hurt because of what he did.

He was nineteen; he didn’t deserve that kind of burden. So he had left, in the only way he knew that would guarantee that his family wouldn’t come looking for him.

Michael was staring at him, completely silent. He had been quiet for several minutes now, and it was getting to Ray.

“Jesus,” Michael finally muttered, standing up to pour himself another cup of coffee. “Okay. You on the run? Cops gonna be coming after you?”

“I…” This hadn’t been what Ray had expected at all. “I don’t think so. I covered my tracks. How are you okay with this?”

Michael shrugged. “I mean, I’m guessing you got mixed up in something,” he said, turning to face Ray again. “Something serious, if a kid like you decided that faking your own death was the best solution.”

“Yeah, something like that,” Ray said.

“And you wanted to get away from it,” Michael supplied, nodding to himself.

Ray barked out a laugh at that. He couldn’t quit now: he had used most of his savings to disappear, and this was the fastest way he knew to make that money back.

Besides, he liked it.

\--

His parents didn’t know about the would-be murderer that Ray had killed when he was sixteen, with the gun that his parents didn’t know he had. His parents didn’t know that the mugger had actually been involved in some way in one of the organized crime rings that ran Liberty City (though to be fair, Ray hadn’t known that at the time either).

His parents didn’t know that he’d been found by the dead man’s boss, that instead of a bullet to the brain Ray had gotten congratulations for taking out _an annoyance_. That was how the man had put it, like the person Ray had murdered was nothing more than a fuckin insect.

His parents didn’t know that he had been offered a job after that, that after nearly a week of sleeplessness that Ray had accepted it because the money he had been offered had been too good to pass up. His parents didn’t know who the anonymous friend was who had put ten thousand dollars into their bank account a few months later.

And now, hopefully, they would never know.

\--

“I just need a place to stay for a few weeks,” Ray said. “Just until I find a place. Then I’ll be out of your hair.”

“Okay,” Michael said easily. “Take as long as you need, dude.”

So Ray laid low in Michael’s apartment for about a week, playing Michael’s games and eating Michael’s food and generally feeling sorry for himself. Michael was out of the apartment a lot — he worked long, weird hours — and it gave Ray time to second- and third-guess every decision he had made that had brought him here. He wasn't used to that.

He was sure he had made the right decision, though. The grief his family felt now would be much less than the grief of finding out their son was a killer for hire.

The door opened and then shut again, knocking him from his thoughts, and he looked up to see Michael, looking exhausted and drawn and—

And bruised.

Ray frowned heavily at the bruise starting to spread across Michael’s cheek. It looked like someone had _punched_ him. “You okay, dude?”

Michael shrugged. “Yeah. smacked myself with a tool. It looks worse than it feels.”

“If you say so,” Ray said, not entirely reassured but willing to drop it, and turned back to his — _Michael’s_ — game. He had achievements to get.

\--

He sent feelers out for a job the next day. Normally it went the other way around, but news of his apparent death may have reached some of his contacts.

“Thought you were dead, kid,” one of them said, and Ray smiled against the phone and said, “Nope,” and gave no explanation. But he got a job: a quick one for a nice chunk of change. He liked jobs like this best, jobs were he took out petty little enforcers of gangs that had been giving people some trouble.

\--

That evening, Michael walked in on him screwing the suppressor onto his pistol. They both froze, Ray staring at Michael’s face and Michael staring at the gun. The bruise was going dark and purple now, Ray noticed.

“Christ,” Michael said, and then turned and walked into the kitchen without another word.

Shit.

“Listen,” Ray said, leaving the gun on the couch and following Michael into the kitchen. Michael was opening up a beer, holding the cold glass against his bruised cheek for a moment before taking a long drink.

“You know what you’re doing with that thing,” Michael said flatly — not a question. Ray nodded anyway. “Okay. you planning on killing somebody?”

Ray cracked a smile. “Gotta pay the bills somehow,” he said.

Michael smiled back. “You mean pay for shitty fast food.”

“And that.” Ray studied Michael's face. Beyond the initial surprise, he didn't seem upset. Ray wouldn't have known what to do if Michael had been upset with him. “You're _okay_ with this?”

Michael shrugged. “Sure. Long as you don't get yourself killed or anything. You want some backup when you go?”

Ray laughed at that. “What kind of backup is an electrician gonna give me? Nah, I'll be fine.”

\--

Turns out that Ray was not, in fact, fine without backup. He hadn’t accounted for his muzzle flashing, hadn’t accounted for missing the shot, hadn’t accounted for a lot of things, and now he was hidden in an alley while some asshole six times his size hunted him down.

“You shouldn’t have fucking moved,” Ray grumbled to himself as he shakily pulled out his knife. He wasn’t good with it and hated using it, but he didn’t want cops on his ass for this. His target wasn’t worth getting arrested in an alley for. He rocked back onto his heels, waiting for his mark to come further into the alley.

Ray never got his chance. As soon as the man stepped into the dimness of the alley, another figure emerged behind him. Then Ray’s job was on the ground, burbling as blood poured from his slit throat. The figure patted the man down — took his wallet and keys — before approaching Ray.

Ray made out curly hair a second before he saw Michael’s face. _What the fuck_ , Ray wanted to say. _That was **my** job_ , he wanted to say.

Instead, what came out of his mouth was, “So you're not actually an electrician.”

Michael laughed. There was a smear of blood on his face and he was giggling at Ray. “Figured you could use the backup,” he said.

“I fuckin had him,” Ray grumbled, taking Michael’s hand when he offered it.

“Sure you did,” Michael said. He began walking out of the alley, and Ray really had no choice but to follow him.

“Why’d you follow me?” Ray demanded as soon as they were back on the street.

It rankled, that apparently Michael thought that he was some kid who needed to be watched to make sure he didn’t fuck up. This was far from the first time a job hadn’t gone perfectly, and Ray had pulled himself out of it every goddamn time. He was good at this. People wouldn’t keep hiring him if he wasn’t.

Michael shrugged. “Because I was worried my friend might get hurt? I never do jobs like this alone.”

“Well I never do jobs like this with anybody,” Ray snapped.

Michael held up his hands. “Sorry for goddamn caring.”

They didn't talk during the rest of the way back to Michael's.

\--

As soon as the door had closed behind them, Ray called to deliver the news that his target was dead. Man was out for a walk, he said. Made it look like a mugging gone wrong. Who knows, it might get half a sentence in the _Times_ on Monday. He hung up after he was given directions to his payment.

Not once had he looked at Michael during the conversation.

\--

It was three days before they spoke again. Ray had spent the last three days searching for a building that would let a teenager rent an apartment even though he didn’t have any credit or any identity. It was proving a lot more difficult than he thought it would be, and he was near the end of his rope but he couldn’t just _stay here_ with some internet friend who thought he was incompetent at the only thing Ray had ever prided himself on besides his gamerscore.

That night Michael approached him; he smelled faintly of beer and of blood and Ray wondered idly, for what felt like the hundredth time, what it was exactly Michael did for a living.

“Sorry,” Michael said. “About the other day. I don’t think you’re incompetent or anything. You wouldn’t have made it here if you were. Just.” Michael shrugged. “I was fuckin looking after my friend. I didn’t think of it as babysitting.”

Ray paused the game on the DS he had bought with his payment from the job and looked up at Michael. “Okay,” he said. “I get that.”

Michael was a good guy — or, maybe not _good_ , exactly, but he was a better person than Ray was.

“Cool,” Michael said. He was silent for a couple minutes, just watching as Ray unpaused his game and went back to catching them all. Then he said, “Wanna go get Taco Bell? My treat.”

And really, who was Ray to turn down free food?

\--

Even though it was obvious to Ray that Michael was somehow involved in Liberty City’s criminal underground, he never asked Michael about it, and in return Michael never asked Ray to clarify what it was, exactly, that he did.

They both kept their business private, and Ray continued killing minor drug dealers and enforcers who had pissed people off while Michael went about pretending to be an electrician by day.

And on nights when neither of them were working, they hung out on the couch and played video games — Ray thoroughly trashing Michael — or watching whatever movie Michael had gotten from Netflix that week. Ray hadn’t ever been much of a conversationalist, but that was okay because Michael didn’t require him to contribute while he yelled at shitty internet games, and Michael didn’t mind when Ray zoned out for a while to play pokemon or to just stare off into space.

And that was how it stayed.

\--

Ray stopped looking for an apartment after it became obvious that nobody was going to rent a place to him. He started chipping in with rent and utilities, started giving Michael money to buy groceries. They never talked about how he had moved in, but Michael never asked him to leave, either.

Ray looked at the calendar hanging in the kitchen one day and realized that six months had gone by since he had faked his death. He wondered, suddenly, how his family was doing. If they were dealing okay. Six months really wasn’t a long time, even though it sometimes felt like he had lived with Michael for forever.

He missed them. His chest was aching suddenly and his throat was tight and he missed his family. Living with Michael was nice but it wasn’t his mom, wasn’t his little sister. Christmas was a few months away and he had never been away from his family during a holiday, and he didn’t know how to deal with the fact that he would never taste his mom’s cooking ever again.

Several hours Michael found him curled up on the couch. Ray hadn’t cried, not really, but he kind of wanted to, just to get it out of his system. Instead everything was circling over and over in his head until he couldn’t think about anything but what he was going to miss for the rest of his life.

“Hey,” Michael said, sitting down next to Ray’s feet. “You okay, man?”

_Why wouldn’t I be?_ was what Ray meant to say, but instead it came out as, “No.”

“Oh.” The hesitance in Michael’s voice betrayed the fact that he thought Ray was going to brush him off. “Want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Okay,” Michael said. He didn’t push, just leaned forward to pick up his controller and turn on his Xbox, providing the white noise of explosions and gunshots while Ray tried to relearn how to exist.

\--

He had never had nightmares about killing people, had never been traumatized about it or anything. Ray figured that that was fucked up somehow but he was okay with it, since it meant he could sleep peacefully as much as he pleased.

Now, though. Now Ray was having nightmares about his family finding him, about his family taking him back home, about them getting hurt. About shooting a target only to see his uncle’s face. About going to his mother’s funeral, knowing he caused her death.

He would wake up in the dead of night, breathing hard, not daring to move — or when he would try to wrench himself out of the nightmares he would find himself trapped, awake but still dreaming, and unable to move.

The third night, he woke up to the sounds of Michael closing the apartment’s door.

“Hey,” Michael said when he saw that Ray was awake.

“Hey.” Ray tried to keep his voice even, to keep his breathing normal. It obviously didn’t work, because Michael sat down next to Ray on the couch.

He didn’t ask what was wrong, and Ray appreciated that. Instead, he started talking about his job — turned out he did do some electrical work during the day, but he talked even more about the people he was involved with, about the kneecaps he had threatened to break that day, about how the guys he worked with liked to call him _Mike_ or _Vinny_ just to piss him off.

Ray’s breathing evened out as Michael’s voice washed the nightmare away, and he found himself laughing a little. It was good.

\--

The next day, Michael dragged Ray out for dinner. “You’ve barely been out of the apartment in months, dude,” Michael said. “You’re fucking stewing all the time. And you’re beating my high scores and making me look like shit. C’mon, we’re going.”

They ended up at a tiny Italian restaurant a couple blocks away, one Michael must have frequented because several people waved at him when they walked in. Ray raised an eyebrow at Michael, who only shrugged.

“Pays to know people,” he said vaguely, and didn’t argue with the waiter when they took a huge percent off the bill at the end of the meal.

\--

After that, Michael made sure Ray left the apartment every few days. Ray always put up a token argument — outside was scary, he had just been out for a job, really Michael don’t you have any other friends, I don’t even like action movies — but in the end he always gave in to Michael’s laugh and his dimples and his infectious smile.

\--

Nobody expected the hitman they hired to be a nineteen-year-old kid. Unfortunately, people also didn’t take teenagers with rifles seriously. Ray knew his physique was working against him here.

So, over the next months as jobs dwindled to basically nothing, he got good at disguise. He started buying masks, trying different ones on during the few jobs he was getting. He should have been doing this from the beginning, really. It was stupid of him not to have.

But soon the rumors began to die down that the Brownman was really the Brown _kid_ , and business picked back up. The masks gave him an air of mystery he liked, and even more than that he liked the extra layer of security he now had. With his identity safely hidden away, he began to pull in bigger jobs.

\--

Michael was the only person he had regular contact with. He slept a couple feet away from Ray. Michael cared about him and Michael had a great smile and Ray was really fuckin lonely, okay?

\--

Ray didn’t consider himself an assassin, not really. _Assassin_ was too lofty of a word for what he did. He was a hitman, and barely even that. He killed little guys: muggers, drug dealers, the occasional mob guy: nothing big. He didn’t off cheating boyfriends or dirty politicians. The closest he had gotten to assassination was shooting a crooked cop.

So when he got a call a week and a half before his twentieth birthday about offing a state senator, Ray laughed. He was a kid with a half-decent rifle, not the kind of person you got to take out government officials.

He didn’t turn down the job, though.

Two days later there was a manilla envelope waiting for him in Michael’s business PO Box a couple neighborhoods over. It had instructions for the job — necessary instructions, he’d been told over the phone. This wasn’t the simple shooting of a drug dealer; this was a _real_ assassination, and now, with the envelope in his hands, it was really sinking in. The Brownman was stepping up in the world, and it felt good.

It also had a third of his payment and Ray honestly could not believe the amount of money he was raking in for this. It was probably more than all of his other jobs _combined_. He could lay low and do nothing but play video games for a year and not have to worry.

The job was all planned out for him, down to the time and date of the assassination itself and the caliber of bullet he would be using.

He would need to get a new rifle.

\--

“It was all they had,” Michael said, like he needed to _apologize_. “We can repaint it if you hate it.”

“Nah,” Ray said casually to mask how honestly fucking touched he was. He picked up the sniper rifle reverently. It was obviously second-hand, and glaringly pink, but Michael had _gone out and gotten it for him_.

“I’m pretty sure it’s the right caliber and everything,” Michael said.

“It’s perfect,” Ray said with a soft smile that wasn’t aimed entirely at the gun. “That senator won’t know what hit him.”

\--

Some days it was strange, that Ray and Michael worked in the same kinds of circles. Ray knew that he had to have been hired by Michael’s mob before, but they didn’t talk about it. Inside the apartment that Ray was starting to think of as _theirs_ , they didn’t talk about work unless they had to — Michael saying he would be gone for a couple days to take care of some business, Ray asking Michael which ammo stores wouldn’t rip him off.

More rarely, Michael would come home bruised, blood running down his face and dripping off his knuckles, or Ray would limp home with a sprained ankle from a quick getaway. Then, they would spend half an hour in the cramped bathroom, patching each other up. Ray would, inevitably, find himself staring at Michael’s hair or his mouth or his freckles, heart pounding every time Michael moved Ray’s hands to show him how to best close up the cut on Michael’s forehead.

“You good?” Michael asked one of these nights, talking carefully around the cut on the inside of his cheek. “You look a little pale, dude.”

Ray nodded and looked away, down to Michael’s battered knuckles. He took a deep breath. And then, before he could overthink it or stop himself, he leaned in to Michael’s space and pressed his lips against the clean skin of Michael’s cheek. For that second that they were touching, Ray drank in the smell of blood and sweat and antiseptic. _Michael_.

“Oh,” Michael said, very softly, and Ray pulled away. He resisted the urge to run, to get out, to fake his own death all over again so he wouldn’t have to deal with the fallout of _kissing his best friend_.

“‘Oh’?” Ray said like his heart wasn’t in his throat. He pulled away, or tried to — suddenly Michael’s battered hands were on his collar, in his hair, reeling him back in so Michael could kiss him on the mouth.

“Fuckin idiot,” Michael mumbled against Ray’s lips some time later, and Ray couldn’t help but laugh and breathe in Michael and hold on.

\--

Their relationship stayed surprisingly chaste after that. Sure, they kissed a lot more now and sometimes even cuddled a little bit, but they hadn’t even gotten to second base yet — which Ray hadn’t expected. He had kind of hoped for handjobs and happy endings, but taking it slow like this was pretty nice too.

Whenever the heavy petting started happening Michael would pull away, and since Ray wasn’t a _total_ dickbag he didn’t question Michael about it.

“So, uh, Ray,” Michael said one night. There was a reality tv show on in the background, but neither of them had been paying attention to that for a while. The freckles on Michael’s cheeks were more interesting.

“Yeah?” Ray asked, noticing how Michael tensed up. He hoped this wasn’t going to lead to a feelings conversation. What they had was easy because they didn’t need to talk about it.

“Listen, I meant to tell you earlier,” Michael said, pushing a little away from Ray. Ray had never seen Michael so unsure of himself. “But since this is a thing now you kinda need to know. I’m trans — transgender.”

Ray hadn’t expected that, but he could roll with it. “Okay,” he said.

Michael continued as if Ray hadn’t said anything: “Y’know, born a girl and shit. I still have breasts and all that crap.”

“Dude, I am all about the ti-tays,” Ray blurted out before he could stop himself, and then, mortified, added, “I mean. If you’re all about the ti-tays, that is. If you’re not then I’m not.”

“Yeah?” Michael asked softly, looking at Ray out of the corner of his eye.

“Yeah,” Ray said, moving closer to Michael. “I’m pretty into you, dude. You couldn’t say much to change that now.”

“Taco Bell sucks,” Michael replied without missing a beat, laughing when Ray grabbed a pillow to smack him with.

\--

Not much changed, not really. Michael was a little more open with physical affection now, and they would make out for long stretches of time without Michael pulling away.

He’d also wander around the apartment shirtless sometimes. Ray loved this, loved seeing the muscles he’d previously only gotten to feel through layers of cloth. Michael’s chest was small, but with his shirt off it was noticeable. Ray had to wonder at that.

“Hey Michael,” Ray said one day, watching Michael towel off his hair. “Feel free to punch me if this is dumb, but how did I not notice your chest before? I mean… y’know. They’re a little noticeable.”

Michael frowned but picked up a tight white tanktop that Ray saw him wear under his clothes. He brandished it at Ray as he said, “I bind, idiot. Keeps ‘em flat.”

“That seems… uncomfortable.”

Michael shrugged. “Yeah, kinda. Better than the alternative, so I deal with it.”

“Oh. You wear it to sleep, too?”

“Sometimes. Not supposed to, really, but it kept you from wondering about shit. People say it’ll fuck up my ribs if I do that too much, though.”

“I happen to like your ribs,” Ray said. “And your… you. So don’t fuck it up too bad, okay?”

Michael grinned. “Yes sir, whatever you say, sir.”

“You know what I mean. Asshole.”

\--

This job had been weeks in the making, and now Ray was hidden in an empty apartment across the street from the Senator’s outdoor speech. Idiot.

His employer wanted this to be memorable and public. It would have been easier to take the guy out in his home, or at night, but Ray wasn’t calling the shots here. Besides, the pay was just too good. He could accept a few risks.

Ray didn’t care much about politics. Everybody in this city — in this state — was corrupt as shit and in the end it didn’t matter who you voted for because they all had the same agendas: themselves. This guy was just some incumbent that Ray’s employer wanted out of the way in the coming elections.

Ray set up his rifle with steady hands. It was a cloudy day, not too sunny, not too windy. Perfect for the start of a campaign — or for an assassination.

He was much too far away to hear what the senator was saying, but he could hear his crowds cheering as he made some promise. Ray settled in to wait for that perfect moment.

After a few minutes of still patience, he got it. The breeze died down entirely and the senator’s security looked away to glare down at the unruly crowd, and Ray calculated the angle for half a second before he took his shot.

Brain matter splattered the banner behind the senator as he collapsed and everyone froze for a moment, but Ray didn’t waste more than a second taking it all in. He pulled in his rifle and closed the curtains as unobtrusively as possible before breaking down the weapon. His heart was beating so loudly he could barely hear the police sirens screaming from a few blocks away.

Downtown, the buildings were packed close together, close enough that even with the rifle weighing down his backpack, Ray could jump from one fire escape to the next (praying and thanking his dumb high school friends all the while), making his way across rooftops until he was on the side of the block furthest from the chaos. Then he stripped off his gloves and mask, took the elevator down to the lobby, and walked outside.

Ray got back to Michael’s apartment without even being stopped. He almost couldn’t believe it. He knew he had taken a risk in keeping his rifle with him, but it had been a _gift_ from _Michael_ and he just couldn’t stand the thought of leaving it in that empty apartment for the cops to take.

His hands stayed steady until he was safe inside and the sheer magnitude of what he had just done caught up with him, and then he couldn’t stop shaking. He had just assassinated a state official and gotten away with it. Then he was laughing and couldn’t stop. He was a real assassin now.

He received the rest of his payment the next day: a neat stack of unmarked, nonsequential $50 and $100 bills in a backpack handed to him at the agreed meeting point a block from the apartment. He also got a congratulations on a job well done and a promise that the underground networks would know who had been responsible for the marvelous execution.

Ray kept the backpack in a cabinet in the kitchen, safely squirreled away behind canned corn and dry pasta and cheetos. He had plans for that money.

\--

Ray sat on the edge of the tub and watched blandly as Michael stuck the needle in his own thigh. Michael coming out to him meant that Ray was more privy to moments like these, when Michael was half-naked and concentrating on injecting his hormones. He moved with the ease of someone who had been doing this for a while.

“Hey, Michael,” Ray said as Michael placed a bandage over the pinprink-small needle hole. “Are there like, surgeries or anything for you?”

Michael shrugged. “Yeah. I want to get top surgery some day, but it’s fucking expensive without insurance.”

Ray smiled. “You think surgeons take cash?”

Michael looked up. “Ray, _no_.”

“I have more money than I know what to do with right now. A few thousand dollars is _nothing_ , dude. It’s just gonna sit in our pantry otherwise.”

Michael was silent for several minutes, chewing on his lower lip and not meeting Ray’s eyes.

“I dunno,” he said finally. “I’ll think about it. It’s more complicated than you think it is.”

\--

In the end, they never got the chance to try to figure it out.

Michael burst into the apartment, red-faced, hair a mess. Ray was on his feet instantly: he had never seen Michael this panicked.

“I may be in a lot of trouble,” Michael said. His eye was swelling with the beginning of a shiner; he was holding his hands carefully inside his hoodie pockets like they hurt.

“Michael,” Ray said, almost warningly.

“I didn’t fuckin know who he was! They were the ones that set up the goddamn fight, not me. Fuck. I fucked up, Ray.” Michael ran his shaking hands through his hair.

“Okay,” Ray said. “Okay.” He had no idea what to do with Michael’s fear. He had never been good at comfort. “Can we fix this?”

Michael let out a desperate, choked laugh. “Half the fucking mob is after me, Ray. No, I don’t think we can.”

Ray started to recognize the look in Michael’s eyes: it was the same one he had seen in the mirror before he faked his death.

Michael was going to run.

“I have to get out of the city,” Michael said. “Christ, I can't fucking believe —”

“Okay,” Ray said. He had to keep calm, had to not let himself think about the fact that they had targets on their backs, because one of them had to. “When do we leave?”

Michael sucked in a deep breath, almost like relief. He hadn't thought that Ray would come with him. Idiot.

“Now would be preferable,” Michael said. “Like, _right_ _now_. How fast can you leave?”

Ray was already pulling out his backpack and going around the apartment, pulling cash from his hiding spots. He probably should have gotten a more secure place, but it sure made things convenient now. He stuffed a couple shirts in there, and then zipped it up. “I’m ready,” he said.

They would have to travel light, so as to not call attention to themselves. Ray mourned the Xbox and his sniper rifle, but there was no way they would be able to carry them discreetly.

He was disappearing all over again, but at least this time he wasn’t alone.

Michael stared for a couple seconds. “Okay. okay. let's go.”

Michael left the keys and cash for next month’s rent on the table, and then they headed out.

They stuck to well-populated streets, to busy subways. Ray held Michael’s hand tight but couldn’t help the nervous glances behind him. He had never been _hunted_ like this before.

It was nearly seven when they made it to the train station and bought two tickets on the first train out. Yeah, one-way’s fine, Michael said. Yeah, Chicago is good. It must have looked suspicious as all hell but Ray’s fake ID passed inspection and nobody stopped them from getting on the train. It was all so easy and it made Ray’s stomach churn.

Michael’s leg didn’t stop bouncing until the train was pulling away from the station, and then he slumped in his seat and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “Fuck,” Michael muttered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

\--

In Chicago they jacked a car on an empty street and started driving. “Where to?” Michael asked. He barely knew how to drive but Ray didn’t know at all.

Ray shrugged. “Heard good things about San Andreas,” he said.

Michael barked out a laugh. “No you haven’t. I’m not sure anybody’s ever had a good thing to say about San Andreas.”

Ray laughed, too. “True. But there’s good business out there. And it’s pretty damn far away from your mob buddies.”

“Yeah,” Michael said, conceding with a sideways nod. “Yeah, I guess you’re right there.”

\--

In Kansas they got pulled over for speeding on a dark, lonely patch of highway. Ray was at the wheel. He had been watching Michael on the trip, and while he wasn’t _good_ at driving he was able to take over when Michael started nodding off.

The cop asked for Ray’s license and registration and Ray leaned over Michael as if he was pulling them out of the glove compartment. Instead he came away with a gun and shot the cop between the eyes before he could even say a thing.

The gunshot jolted Michael into full wakefulness. “Ray?”

“C’mon, help me drag this guy into the cornfield,” Ray said, not answering Michael’s questioning stare.

They kept driving. Ray ignored Michael’s stare, kept his eyes on the road.

“He was probably corrupt as shit anyway,” Ray finally said. “That’s how cops are.”

\--

Eventually, they made it to Los Santos. They got a shitty apartment in a cheap part of town, and really it wasn’t all that different from their old one. It was cramped and the windows were warped enough that Ray could feel the hot wind coming in through the cracks, and it was _theirs_.

Ray waited for the news that the Brownman had left Liberty City to catch up to them. In the meantime, it was easy to get into selling drugs in dark clubs. It got him more involved in the crews than he was used to, but they had to pay rent somehow.

Michael fell in with one of the gangs in their neighborhood, and from what he told Ray, he did pretty much anything they told him to. He had never had the reputation that Ray had; he didn’t have a name to fall back on later. More than Ray, Michael was starting completely over again.

One day Michael came home breathless and shaky and smiling ear-to-ear, and in between frantic, elated kisses he told Ray how he had gotten to _blow up a building_ , Ray, the crew had trusted him and his growing skills with explosives enough to take out an entire warehouse.

A week later, Ray heard whisperings that one of the crews in town — _Fake_ -something — was looking for a sniper. Maybe it was time for the Brownman to reveal that he had moved.

Things were starting to look up.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [ryanthepowerbottomguy](http://ryanthepowerbottomguy.tumblr.com) over on tumblr! come say hi! (there's also a lot of tumblr-exclusive writing over there)


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